


Minkowski Commanding - Planet Earth

by soybeez



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/M, Minkowski goes home, Spoilers, after the finale, so there are a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-26 14:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13237419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soybeez/pseuds/soybeez
Summary: Commander Renée Minkowski returns home after the Wolf 359 finale. This is her seeing her husband for the first time after he finds out that she is not not dead.





	Minkowski Commanding - Planet Earth

**Author's Note:**

> There are a lot of feelings here, considering that Dominik thought that his wife was dead and now she's not. So there's that. They also curse a little.

Lieutenant Commander Renée Minkowski stood in front of the solid wooden door. In the last few years Renée had been through hell. She had almost died more times than she could count. Her friends had almost died more times then she could count. Some people had died and she had killed some of them. Standing on this porch, her porch, she barely even felt like Renée. At least, not the Renée that had walked off of this porch and gotten into a car to take her to Cape Canaveral. Now she was Commander Minkowski. She wondered how Commander Minkowski would fare on earth. 

After another deep breath she knocked. Once. Twice. Three times. She could hear footsteps on the other side of the door. Shoes always had been so loud on the tile. They needed to put down a rug. Dominik knew that she was coming. Kennedy Space Center had called him once the Urania landed and everyone realized that the entire Hephaestus crew was not, in fact, dead. It had been a long day. Especially since those not dead people included someone from an old crew, a man with no memories, an AI, a renowned and ageless doctor who also had no memories, and a guy from black ops with very little documentation. They had been a bit of a paperwork nightmare. It had been almost two weeks before they had been allowed to leave Kennedy and Canaveral. There had been a lot of “What do you mean you didn’t die in a fiery shuttle crash” and “Please sign these papers that say you don’t blame the government for your supposed fiery space death”. She hadn’t wanted to blindside Dominik by having his dead wife just show up at the front door, but she also wanted to do all of this in person. The whole ‘surprise I’m not dead thing’. She needed to. So before getting in a sleek black town car to leave the base she had someone call him and explain that she would be showing up soon. That she would be coming home. 

Renée had decided to brace herself for anything. He could have gotten remarried, or at least be dating someone. He could have another family by now. It had been three years since she had ‘died’. Maybe he had met someone and settled down and had a family now. A family. That would be, well that would be rough. She did not have a tactical kit hidden in an air duct for that one. The door opened. 

Dominik stood in the doorway. He was wearing a pair of worn jeans and one of those soft flannel shirts that she had always liked to slip on in the winter. She would make coffee while Dom made waffles with berry syrup. She would crawl out of bed and throw one on over her tank top. The shirts always smelled like his shitty aftershave. It was cheap and too strong but he had been wearing it since he was twenty and had broken his first big story. It was a superstition thing. Apparently bad aftershave was the secret to his success. God she had missed that smell.

“Renée.” Her name came out of his mouth in a sob. He reached for her like a deserted man reaching for water. His fingers knotted in her cheap Cape Canaveral sweatshirt, one of the few articles of clothing not from a space station that she now owned, pulling her into him. His face buried in her neck. Her nose filled with the acrid stink of aftershave. The same stink that she remembered. She was so glad that he hadn’t changed that. The tears started streaming down her face without her even realizing it. “I thought you were dead,” he said into her neck. The desperation was palpable. It was a real, physical thing that he had been living with for years. The thought made her chest hurt. She was his ghost and now she was back in the flesh. “God, Renée, I thought that you were dead.”

He needed to wash his hair. It was the only thing that she could really focus on as she stood on the porch, their arms wrapped against each other and bodies pushed close. Her fingers threaded through his hair, her cheek pressed up against his. She had missed him. She had missed him so much that it hurt. It had been something that she had tried to push back, to push down, to push away. She had tried to focus on anything other than the fact that her missing him felt like a bullet to the gut, a comparison she now felt quite qualified to make. She could feel his breath on her neck and his warmth pressing into hers. She hadn’t felt that in years. 

After about ten minutes on the porch Dominik finally pulled away. His hand rested on her cheek, his eyes boring into hers. Renée had forgotten how blue his eyes were. They were a dark, stormy blue with flecks of gray along the edges of the irises. There was still the faint line of a scar running under this left eye that he had gotten from a ring in a college first fight. “Come on inside, Renée, I know that you must have had a long couple of days.” 

“Try a long couple of years.” Renée threaded her fingers through his, following him into the house. Their house. 

Everything about the small, square two-story house was both familiar and alien at the same time. She snorted at the thought. Alien. The furniture was the same but things had been moved around. The TV was bigger and there were more DVDs on the built in bookshelf. It looked like a man lived here. Her musicals had been packed up, and her science fiction novels. Her patchwork quilt and the eight pairs of fuzzy socks that were always spread across the room had been replaced by a simple gray throw blanket and a pair of men’s slippers. The pictures of them that had been in the living room were gone. Everything hanging on the wall was black and white and shades of gray. 

“Do you want something? Tea? Coffee? Liquor?” He sounded like he had on their first date. Nervous and on edge. His fingers tapped out a rhythm on his knee and his movements were all jittery. He kept touching her. Every minute or so he would reach out his fingers brushing against her face of her shoulder or knee; just some way to make contact with her. He was in awe of her. Renée wanted to crawl into her lap, bury her face into his chest, and never let go again. 

“I think we need to talk, Dominik. I think we need to, I think we need to figure things out first.” Renée took a deep, rattling breath. “I know that I have been gone a very long time. I know that you, that you thought that I was dead. That they told you I died.” Her tongue tripped over the thick, heavy words. Dead. Died. Dominik had through that she had died. “So I understand if you have moved on. I’m not mad, I’m not upset, I just, I just need to know.” The words stuck in her throat. They were sharp and jagged and felt like glass cutting up her chest. “I just need to know if you’ve moved on, Dominik. I just need to know what situation we’re dealing with.” Talking even now she felt like Commander Minkowski more than she felt like Renée. She felt like she was explaining something to someone on her ship and not her husband. 

“Renée.” There it was again. Her name. They way he said her name sounded like a prayer. “I haven’t. I haven’t moved on. I,” he pushed his hand through his hair, grasping for the words. That’s always what he did when he was upset. He may have been a journalist but he was only good with words if he was writing them down. His bangs were starting to fluff up from his fingers pushing through it. It made him look younger. “Renée, I could never move on from you. I was wrecked when they told me, when that woman called and told me that you had died. We just had an empty casket at the funeral.” He wrapped his fingers back around hers. His fingers were rough and ink stained. The gold band on his ring finger pressed cool against her hand. “We had an empty casket and those lilies that always stink and people telling me how sorry they were.” His fingers gripped tighter. “I’m just so glad that you’re back, Renée. I’m just, I am just so glad that you are here.” 

His eyes were so blue and his hair was flopping around them and the three days of stubble on his jaw made him look tired and vulnerable and as young as he was when they met. She kissed him. 

Maybe they should have talked more. Maybe they should have taken some time to process things. Maybe they should have done a lot of things. Renée didn’t care. She didn’t care because Dominik was here and he was alive and so was she and she couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to kiss him. He tasted like burnt coffee and salmon bagels. The flannel shirt was just as soft as she remembered it. His lips felt the same pressed against hers. Her skin tingled where his fingers gripped her. They pressed tight and hard and possessive. Now that he had her back Dominick would never let her go again. She never wanted him to. 

But as much as she wanted the moment to last forever it couldn’t. Not right now. So she pulled away. She pulled her fingers out of his messy mop of hair and pulled her hand out from under his shirt where it had been pressed against his warm, smooth stomach. Her breathing was heavy and ragged, her chest heaving up and down. Dominick looked just as overwhelmed as she felt. He pulled his hand out from her tangle of curls and the other from where it was gripped around her hip. His pupils were wide and dark and he kept pressing his fingers against his lips as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. She couldn’t either. 

“Sorry. Sorry, I just think…” It was hard to get her words out between breaths. “I just think that we need to talk before we go any farther. A lot has happened and, and god, Dom.” She reached out, wrapping her fingers around his. “I am so happy to be here. I just don’t want to rush things. So, so I think we should wait a few days until we get more adjusted and things calm down a bit before we take things any further.” 

She needed the time to figure out who she was now. Who was Renée Minkowski without a space station and a crew and having to fight off invasions from aliens and the a-moral Goddard agents? She needed to figure out how to sleep in a bed and walk with gravity. There was something oddly indulgent about drinking without straws. If she never had to use one again she wouldn’t miss it. 

“That’s alright, Renée. That is alright.” He leaned forward, pressing into her. A long finger wrapped a bit of hair round and round. It was an absent, intimate gesture. “It makes sense. We’re both, well we’re both a little worked up right now.” He chuckled dryly. He was always like that, a little cynical. Cynical but willing to accept the good when it came along. “And this is a lot. This is a fucking lot.” He kissed her cheek. “What about that drink? Can I get you something? Maybe some tea. I think there still might be some of your nasty herbal junk shoved into the back of the pantry.”

“I’ll take coffee,” Renée said, following him into the kitchen. “”It’s been way too long since I’ve had real coffee.”


End file.
